Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'm finding some distress here when we're discussing these things. There are a lot of assumptions being made within these discussions about patients' conditions, about what a medical practitioner may or may not do, from a lot of us who, frankly, aren't doctors. We've heard a lot of testimony. I would like to have heard a lot more. We've heard testimony before this committee that says some of that is quite contrary to a lot of the assumptions being made here about capacity, about who is signing off on this.
We're legislators; we're not medical practitioners. It's our job to try to have at least some safeguards on a legislation that is literally about life and death. One-size-fits-all is not a good public policy, in my view. We have to be aware that there are differences. There are regional differences; there are patient-centred differences. Having one of the physicians signing off with an expertise in that patient's ailment seems to me to be the minimum criteria I would want for any procedure relating to my health of any serious nature.
I don't see that as overly onerous, but it is a safeguard, again, to just make sure that everything is as it should be, and that it's understood at the time that a big decision like this is being made. There seems to be an assumption in the discussions here that it's just an inevitable thing. It should be a clear choice right up to the end of life—that what you're doing is your clear choice, and for valid reasons.
Again, in the legislation as presented, we seem to be throwing out so many safeguards way outside of the Truchon decision, without the careful thought put into it that some of these safeguards would allow for.
Thank you.